Once upon a time, there was a One
by Akin Glen
Summary: A power far greater than anything the matrix has ever seen emerges and threatens the frail alliance between the machines and the humans. This power must be stopped... But should it?
1. Episode 1: The Question

**Author's note**: though I have read and reread the story times without number, it's possible that I might still change certain bits. I'm not used to putting my stuff up after only just writing it. It takes weeks of editing - I take things out and add things in to make the story more fluid. I'm going to do that with this one as well, so it's possible that when you come back to read this some things might have changed. Bare with me. I hope you enjor this, guys. Have fun!

**_Edit:_** added more description to make characters more real. Increased Lock's rank (for good reason).

_Synopsis: _The beginning of the end. Two soldiers, on their way to the cell of a very dangerous prisoner, ponder the limits of the prisoner's capabilities in the matrix and how it affects the people of Zion.

* * *

The men strode down the dim passageway, the soles of their boots clicking on each contact they made with the concrete floor, sending off dull echoes that drifted the length and breadth of the seemingly endless channel. They were garbed in uniforms made out of cotton robes, nothing stylish. No fancy gold-embroidered ranks on their shoulders, just simple black leather boots, matching black belts, and a neat mix of white and brown cloth for body cover. Their words, though spoken in soft tones, rang loud and clear in the vacant hallway.

The echoes stopped the moment they halted at the last metal door in the passage. The soldier on the left banged the door with his fist and patches of rust broke free off the door's surface, staining the air then gliding to the dusty ground.

'You're up!' He yelled, peeking through the rectangular hole on the door. Light from the hallway spilled feebly through the hole into the cell, too weak to render the murk powerless but strong, at least, to give the prisoner a flimsy outline. The prisoner, head bowed as though in silent prayer or meditation, sat against the wall across from the door.

'You ready, Jim?' The soldier leaned away from the door and stared at the man beside him.

'You kidding me, Andy? It's a woman in there.' Jim said, chuckling. Tiny prickles of black hair poked from his head, and his skin, which was normally pale, mimicked the dull tone of the light in his environment.

'How long you been here?' Andy said. His steely eyes forced Jim to grunt, cough and erase all traces of humour from his face.

'Two months.' Jim answered, doing his best to avoid Andy's eyes.

'You've been here for two months. You know these prisoners more than I do?'

'No.'

'Then what the hell do you mean by that stupid comment?' Andy snapped, shifting his entire body weight to fully face Jim. Like Jim, his hair was cropped as low as possible, but his skin was a dark shade of coffee brown. He was also two heads taller. If that wasn't enough, his muscular build made the glower from his eyes all the more daunting.

'I was ... I was just saying – she could be harmless –'

'Where are we right now?' Andy cut him off.

'Prison...' Jim said nervously, glancing around to check that he was right. He wasn't about to make another faux pas.

'Which level?'

'Level 10.'

'And what kind of prisoners get thrown into level 10?' Andy demanded.

'Dan - dangerous prisoners,' Jim wet his lips, his eyes fixated on his boots.

Andy growled. He would have smacked Jim right there if he could get away with it.

'Don't ever ask me stupid questions again, you hear me? You know the protocol. Ready your weapon, soldier!' Andy barked his order.

'Y - yes sir,' Jim nodded vigorously and armed and cocked his submachine gun which had previously been hanging from his left shoulder. He took a number of steps away from Andy, aiming his weapon at the door.

Andy selected a large key from the ring of keys in his possession, dangling from his belt at his left side, and inserted it into the door's keyhole.

'Wait!' Jim said.

His hand poised around the key, ready to turn it, Andy looked Jim's way.

'You alright?' He asked on noticing Jim's crinkled, damp forehead.

'Y – yeah,' Jim managed a weak smile that disappeared as quickly as it had materialised.

'Are you sure?' Andy asked again, for he perceived Jim's weapon judder faintly. The boy's hands were shaking.

'Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm just – you know – unsettled.' Jim said in a tremulous voice.

'Calm down, Jim. Is it because of something I said?'Andy knew he should be more welcoming to these new recruits, but it wasn't like he never tried; they just had a way of getting on his nerves. And his age-old impatience with people in general always intensified confrontations like this. The fact was this wasn't a playground or mummy's kitchen, and they - recruits - weren't kids anymore. They were soldiers now and they had to realise that. If being merciless to them was one way to help accomplish this, drive the message home, then so be it.

'No. I just realised who the prisoner is, that's all.' Jim said, motioning at the door with his gun. 'It's _her_.'

'Oh, right.' Andy sighed. _Not again_. 'You sure you can handle this?' He asked calmly.

'I just got a couple of questions before we go in.'

'Shoot.'

'Is it true what they say about her? They say she can...' Jim's voice trailed off and he looked around to make sure no one was with them, like it mattered if anyone was. 'They say she can control things _outside_ the matrix!' He whispered.

'There's no need to lower your voice.' Andy said. He stared into the hole for a brief moment. 'She is powerful, but she has no power over us.'

'The things she did in the matrix – why she's locked up – are they true? She ... she –'

'Yes, she did.' Andy nodded. 'All of them. No mercy.'

'No mercy?' Jim squeaked, his eyes widening in terror. 'My God...'

'She has no power over us, Jim. You need to remember that.' Andy switched his attention to the door. It was time to get the prisoner out.

'I was 16 when he saved us, you know!' Jim blurted out quickly the instant Andy's hand on the key moved a fraction to unlock the door.

'Jim, seriously...' Andy groaned. Frustration and impatience edged into his voice. He took one good look at Jim and saw that the young soldier was frightened beyond words. Perhaps the boy should not have volunteered to be transferred here. Andy really didn't need this. He had specifically requested from General Lock recruits who could control their emotions around this particular prisoner.

However, it wouldn't hurt to be nice once in a while, Andy supposed. It wasn't Jim's fault that he felt like this, and Jim wasn't alone in displaying this behavioural pattern: it seemed everyone in Zion was scared out of their minds when matters concerning prisoner number E-001 surfaced to the open.

Everyone except Andy.

Andy shrugged and said, '_He_ saved us?'

'Neo. I was 16. I ... remember the machines. I remember they took my friends. My family. Killed them all like rats. They were gonna kill me too. And then they just up and left.' Jim's eyes stared, unfocused and unblinking at the door. Soon afterwards he lifted them to look at Andy, a shadow of trepidation and a touch of appreciation clouding them. 'Neo saved me. Saved us all. At the time I thought he had to be extremely powerful to have done that. He was one man and there was so many of them.' There was a swift change; his eyes had grown darker with dread. 'They say _she_ can do things that Neo could only dream of.'

'What's your point?' Andy's hand left the key. Jim had gained his undivided attention.

'If Neo, one man, could stop the machines from destroying us ... and she's supposed to be more powerful than him, what do you suppose she could do?'

Andy shifted his gaze to the hole on the door, to the faint shape of the prisoner. He saw her head lift, and though her eyes were invisible in the darkness he knew she was staring directly at him.

'Better yet, whose side is she on, man or machine ... or neither?'

That was _the_ question. The answer to it was not a simple one but it was there, clear as the bits of mildew and filth on the walls of the hallway. The answer was –

* * *

**Note**: For those familiar with my past work, this is actually a rewrite of _The Chronicles of the One_, which I deleted. I didn't like the way I started it and the way the story was going so I decided to reboot the entire plot. Morever I wasn't that good a writer when I wrote _Chronicles_. I'm not perfect now but I'm better. Feel free to critique my work and review whenever you please. I'll try to be consistent this time and upload new chapters as soon as humanly possible.

Up next, **Episode 2: Modus Vivendi**

_Synopsis:_ Prisoner E-001 is removed from her cell and taken to a secluded visitors' area to meet with Captain Link. Thereafter, E-001 gets a rather unexpected visit from a certain councillor.


	2. Episode 2: Modus Vivendi

**Author's note**: Took me one month to write this. Lol sorry. I do that a lot; tweak and tweak until I can tweak no more. Enjoy. And many thanks to Lovelace; I've learnt a great deal from you.

**_Edit:_** contrary to the synopsis printed at the end of the last episode/chapter, the mysterious councillor did not make an appearance in this episode. I decided to cut him out because the episode was becoming rather lengthy. He will be in the next one. I needed to let you readers see what Mary/E-001, the protagonist, was going through.

_Synopsis: _Prisoner E-001 is removed from her cell and taken to a secluded visitors' area to meet with Captain Link, an old friend.

* * *

Thunder. Lightening. The sound of a million men marching.

A myriad of tattered corpses of felled men and soot-plastered detritus littered the vast expanse of thick concrete which broadened from the dock to the heart of Zion. The smell of burning flesh and molten iron filtered the air off its purity, forsaking a repellent pong in its place. Screams of pain and cries for help resounded, but the thunder masked it all. Something was coming.

Some _things_ were coming.

Machines – sentinels whizzed and whooshed helter-skelter above, while manic men, women and children scurried about below, frantically searching for cover. Their limbs entreated for respite, their hearts strained from the fear that tugged and stabbed them, and their eyes snatched focus from varying corners and cavities. Confusion reigned supreme. Where to go? Where to run to? But nowhere lay in sight; nowhere safe. The enemy was everywhere, an all-knowing god-like entity, hastening airborne and weaving invisible obstacles adroitly in fluid oscillations.

This was no war. This was genocide.

For the sentinels it was simply a game. Akin to a human armed with a fork and permitted free will to pick bits and pieces of chicken from a plate set in front of them, sentinels dived sharply from a sea of undulating metal in the sky, swooping in the vein of an unexpected gale towards the ground, and pinched whichever unlucky human happened upon their way. A girl about the age of twelve was whisked by the ankle. The offending sentinel, with its many crimson eyes and tentacles of steel, dragged her frail frame across the ground, shredding her skin and rupturing her bones in the process. The girl begged, shrieked and wept. All amounted to nothing as the beastly machine soon ascended with its prize and disappeared into the black clouds of boisterous sentinels.

She never returned.

Could she have been saved? That was beside the point. The fact of the matter was nobody wanted to be a hero. Maybe on some other day or in some other circumstance but not today, because today – in this bleak madness of death and agony – heroism was tantamount to idiocy.

Thunder. Lightening. The sound of a million men marching.

Thunder, because machines and APU Corps clashed, metal against metal, fury against fury, a fight to the death; lightening, because the arched firmament of Zion illuminated with bursts of gunfire and blinding flares of explosions; and the sound of a million men marching, because an army of biped and quadruped machines – hundreds of thousands of them – stomped down the dock in an organised fashion, a faultless rendition of a military parade. Ahead of them was their leader, a hooded figure. It clutched a weapon bearing close semblance to a spear in its right gloved hand and progressed unlike the others – less stiffly and more gracefully. This one was human.

As the mysterious figure advanced, so did the legion behind it. The reverberating clumps from the soles of their feet clouting the reinforced concrete flooring assailed the ears of residual dwellers of Zion and hallmarked terror in their enervated hearts.

Suddenly, the foremost figure – commander in chief – halted. The machines took that as a cue and ceased their marching. The figure stared skyward, scrutinising the pandemonium above, and then forwards at the fleeing humans. It gladdened its heart to observe them thus. Cockroaches ... scum of the earth ... weeded wild plants ... worthless batteries. Did they honestly think they could escape what would soon befall them? The hilarity of the thought brought a sinister smile upon its veiled face. The time to eradicate these farm harvests had finally arrived.

The leader pulled back its hood to reveal a tidy mass of long brown tresses swept back and tied into a ponytail. Narrowed blue eyes gleaming fire and full lips curled in rage, _she_ lifted her weapon to the sky and bellowed in a strong voice, 'MORPHEUS!'

Anomalous mechanical screeches of rage broke amid her army, encouraging and stoking up her wrath. Her heart hammered in expectation and her breasts rose and fell in rhythm. Hatred was her fuel. Tonight she would kill plenty. Nothing would stand in her way. Nothing... Nothing... NOTHING!

****

Mary's eyes flew open with a start and her head rose abruptly from her knees. Her lungs expanded and deflated from her ragged breathing, and beads of sweat coursed an uneven journey from her knitted forehead along her face. She was seated against the far-ended wall opposite the prison door.

Darkness choked the room she was in, which was rife with an awful tang. But after months of being holed up here against her will her eyes and nose had adjusted to their new dilapidated surroundings, such that the air reeked of a fruity fragrance, a cross between peach and jasmine, and carried with it a peppermint taste. Of course that was not the real case. This substantiated two possibilities: (one) her nose and tongue still functioned as they should, however (two) her brain was having trouble deciphering smell and taste accurately. Or perhaps Mary was directly responsible for the illusory odour and flavour; after all it was better that way than the actuality of things: there was no pleasant scent and the air on her tongue was as dry and upsetting as dust.

Mary shifted a little and a powerful bolt rocked her body to a point where she whimpered and sank her teeth into her lower lip, curbing a distressful cry. This was the aftermath of her interrogatory sessions at the Machine City. They – the machines – desired information that was in her ownership, and when she had been uncooperative and obstinate they had sought other harsher measures to coax her to open up.

Mary groaned. The ordeal was agonising but necessary for the survival of the human race. Her lips twisted into a sardonic, almost regretful smile. She was protecting the same human race that fed her weekly to the machines and locked her up in this dead prison. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.

She bowed and rested her forehead against her knees, listening for any sign of life as she habitually did since she first came to this place. It could have been seconds or minutes (time had no claim here, really) before footsteps – heavy footsteps – echoed from afar. They grew louder as their owners traversed further down the hallway outside her cell. Then they were no more, and as expected an angry fist pounded the door, accompanied by a yell, 'You're up!'

That was Andy. Mary smiled. She waited for him to enter before standing. Not that she could have done otherwise. There really wasn't a choice in the matter, for her wrists and ankles were trussed in chains. She was trapped in her current pose. Andy would have to unshackle her.

The door did not open when it should have. Instead Andy lingered outside chatting with his companion, a soldier called Jim. Mary did not bother to eavesdrop. She had too much on her mind at present. The nightmare was becoming more recurrent, disrupting the little sleep she had, causing her nights to be less comfortable than they already were.

'If Neo, one man, could stop the machines from destroying us ... and she's supposed to be more powerful than him, what do you suppose she could do?'

Mary's ears twitched to life at the statement spoken by the newcomer, Jim. Her head tilted upwards a fraction.

'Better yet, whose side is she on, man or machine ... or neither?'

Mary grumbled incoherent words. To say the least, she was peeved. Whose side was she on? Whose side where _they_ on! She wasn't the one abandoning her own kind and pretending like everything was okay with the world.

Bolts scrapped and the cell-door was unlocked. As it opened, the door chaffed the ground and gave off a foul grating noise. Mary lifted her head and glowered at the figures approaching her tentatively.

'Remember, Jim, she tries anything – shoot her. She uses me as bait – shoot me then shoot her. Understand?' Andy ordered.

'Y – yes sir!' Jim mumbled and stood clear of the pair of them, training his gun at Mary.

'Idiots.' Mary muttered.

'What did you say?' Andy detached the corroded cuffs from her wrists and ankles.

'Allow me to thank you and the rest of Zion. It truly is an honour being the chief subject of this undeniably preposterous myth running rampant.' Mary grunted as Andy spurred her to her feet.

'You have nothing to fear, boy.' She addressed Jim shortly. Her probing gaze made him nervous.

'You ready?' Andy directed his question towards Jim, who nodded and backed out while shaking off the irritating anxiety that nearly manhandled him.

'Move.' Andy gripped Mary's left arm and all but dragged her out of the cell.

'_Agh_!' Mary whimpered. Her body stiffened. 'Wait! Can't we walk a little slower?'

Andy wasn't listening.

'HEY!' Mary yelled and struggled with the puny strength she had left to free her arm.

Andy halted. Jim raised his gun higher, aiming its muzzle at Mary, a clean headshot.

'In case you knuckleheads haven't noticed, I'm in a great deal of pain,' Mary winced.

'It's visitors' time.' Andy said, unsmiling and unsympathetic.

'_I_ am in pain, not the visitors.' Mary said through clenched teeth. Her silent fury lapped at the tip of her tongue, poised to leap out and devour if she did not get what she wanted. 'Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to see anyone?'

'It's not up for discussion. This is protocol. Now, if you don't mind, I have a job to do.' Andy said.

'I can't walk as fast as you can!' Mary protested in a loud voice.

'Alright.' Andy yielded as an all too familiar impatience walloped him full force. 'We'll take it slow.'

Mary sauntered with Andy, her gait rigid with ache. In fact, she hobbled. They got to a waiting elevator and entered. Jim followed last. All the while his gun remained levelled at Mary.

Andy pushed a button and the shuddering twin doors slid shut. Their imminent ascent began.

'You don't have to point that thing at me.' Mary said. Though she did not stare at Jim it was obvious she spoke to him since he was the only person in her vicinity pointing something.

'Ignore her.' Andy said.

Mary chuckled.

'Jim. That's your name, right?' She faced him this time.

'Yeah. What's it to you?' Jim stabbed at a sinister growl. It failed to acquire the appropriate corollary he coveted from Mary.

'I don't have the power to kill you.' She said, smiling at him. 'And even if I did' – the elevator's flight came to an abrupt end and its shuttered doors parted ways – 'I wouldn't.'

Andy led her out. All three of them navigated a similar hallway as the one where Mary's cell sat to an empty room at the end. The yawning room had three functioning light bulbs fastened to its ceiling. Its decrepit walls were in dire need of fresh paint and the tainted air occupying the space necessitated filtering (it could just be Mary's nose).

Mary was seated in one of the two available chairs facing each other. A table stood between them. Andy proceeded to cuff her wrists and ankles with chains fastened to the floor where the chair she occupied was sited.

'C'mon, is that necessary?' She whined.

'With you, everything's necessary.' Andy said. 'See you soon.' He motioned at Jim and they both exited the room.

Mary craned to watch Andy's and Jim's retreating backs disappear past the entrance they had arrived through, and turned to gaze forward, clasping her hands on the table and heaving a dejected sigh. She was bereft of hope.

She assumed her mysterious visitor was enduring some form of obligatory routine search outside the room, which would justify why she had been stuck in this hard, uncomfortable chair for quite some time now.

At last the door in the line of her eyesight opened and a man of dark skin strolled in. He kept his dreadlocks strapped in a plait behind his head. Mary's fatigued eyes tracked his every movement, no matter how slight, regarding his figure with a healthy blend of gratitude and gloom. This remained so past after he had settled into the beckoning empty chair.

'Hey,' he said, his lips growing at either side to shape a rueful smile.

'Hiya Link,' Mary said. A nod of acknowledgement came next.

'You okay?'

'Yep! Can't you see how fabulous I look?'

Link's eyes pored over Mary's face, exploring and ferreting. Her left eyelid was swollen to an unnerving degree that vision in her left eye was almost entirely obscured. Her brown hair, chopped short a tad beneath the hairline at the base of her head, appeared matted and soiled. Her lips were gashed and still bore fresh blood, and her nose appeared crocked, broken. The crimson scores and welts on her cheeks and forehead rendered her face anonymous to him. If he hadn't known beforehand that the prisoner sheltered in this room was Mary he would never have recognised her. He discerned the way she sat, slanting sideways to her right to take the pressure off her throbbing left thigh.

'What did they do to you?' Link gaped in shock.

'Nothing I couldn't handle,' Mary's wrecked lips made her smile look misshapen. It was as if her lips had lost their capacity to stretch properly. Her face was stiff with bruises, puffy and ruby tinted, and her eyes were burdened with hefty bags, connoting that she was not sleeping well.

'Don't joke about this.' Link said solemnly. 'This isn't right, what they're doing to you.'

'It's okay...' Mary reached forth her hand to cover his but the short length of the restraining chain fastened to her wrist barred such an action. Yet she continued to try, tugging, pulling, until her wrist hurt, at which point, with a defeated sigh, she allowed her feeble hand to slump on the table.

'Yeah,' she spoke after a moment's silence, 'I'm a queen around here. The guards fear me.' Her blue eyes stung with the gathering of fresh hot tears. Some queen she was. Look at her, fettered to the ground like a wretched beast awaiting the butcher's knife upon her neck before the day slept.

'Mary,' Link had no cuffs on him. His hands were not confined by anything. He took her hand into his and squeezed gently. 'I'm gonna get you outta this, you hear me?' The seriousness in his eyes emphasised his passion ... his promise.

But it was a promise he had made plenty times before this day.

'Link –'

'You just gotta have hope.' He had a faint idea what she wanted to say and had no intention of hearing it. There was no room for pessimism. Not while he was concerned. 'Here,' he dug into his pocket and retrieved a piece of folded paper.

'What is it?' Mary enquired.

Link opened it out. Mary saw its contents and a grin broke across her face, a rare sparkle of sunshine these days. Link pushed it closer to her so she could hold it and trace her fingers on the crayon drawing of stick figures, one larger than the other. The biggest was labelled "Mummy" and the other smaller one was branded "Me – Lizzie". The caption on the paper, written with the precision and proficiency of a 6 year-old, read: _Mummy and Lizzie. I miss you mummy_.

It was too much for Mary to take. Those blasted tears clinging to her eyelashes sprung free and trekked down her sore cheeks. She would have whipped them off prior to their getaway had she not been so worn out. She was tired of everything. Tired of this place. Tired of being kept away from her little girl.

_Lizzie_.

The name was powerful enough to invoke a volatile emotion of maternal affection which ballooned in her chest and threatened to burst free of its precincts.

_Lizzie_.

Her pride. Her joy. Her love. The sole reason her heart beat. The reason she was here. The reason she would gladly lay down her life to secure a future for Zion despite the abundance of cowards and traitors promenading its corridors, because Zion was Lizzie's sanctuary. These men and women, spineless weaklings, did not deserve her sacrifice. But Lizzie, her Lizzie, her beautiful Lizzie was everything to her and worthy of the world. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – she would not do for her little girl. Why? Simple: her feelings for Lizzie were not founded on motherly responsibility alone but a unique visceral love.

'Link,' even to her, the voice sounded odd, disembodied, as though echoing from a remote unfamiliar place and not her own mouth. 'Thank you.'

'Anything I can do to help.'

Mary bobbed her head once and secreted the paper in her tattered pocket.

'There is one other thing I need from you,'

'What is it?'

Mary's eyes, resolute and challenging, locked on his.

'I need you to take care of my baby.'

'What?' Link said, confounded. 'No, Mary, we talked about this; I'm gonna get you out! It's just taking a little more time than I expected.'

'I understand, but –'

'I met with the council the day before yesterday _and_ yesterday,' Link continued as if he had not heard her, 'and I argued our case. They – they're deliberating on it –'

'Link, I understand.' Mary's gentle voiced subdued him.

'_Please_...' He muttered, his eyes beseeching her to see his cause. 'Please, Mary, I need time. Just a little more time, that's all I ask,'

Mary shook her head.

'I'm sorry. I can't.'

'What about Lizzie, huh? What do I tell her? She doesn't know where you are, Mary!' Link had grown adamant and his voice rose to highlight this behavioural adjustment. 'I lie to her every day. _Every day_! I tell her, "Mummy's coming back. She's just gone on business. She's fine wherever she is." What do you want me to do? Tell her you're dying? Th – that you're not coming back? She needs you! I don't –' His voice cracked and he avoided her wounded gaze, possibly because his eyes had welled. 'I – I don't know what else to tell her...'

'Tell her mummy was brave.' Mary said. 'Tell her ... tell her mummy loves her very much, and mummy will always be there... You tell her ... tell her that. For me. Please, Link...'

'No.' Link said in clipped tones, his lips pressing against each other, rigid with anger. '_I won't let you die_!'

'I'm sorry, Link. I ... really am.' Articulation had become a difficult process for Mary, what with the lump lodged in her throat. 'You're a Captain now. You have a son and you have Zee. You have to start looking out for yourself – your career, your family. And I need someone with a stable home ... good money to take care of Lizzie. You can't do that if you lose your job...'

'I won't lose my job!'

'The council will _never_ release me, Link!' Mary enforced her words on him in hopes that he would appreciate where she was coming from. 'Their fear will not let them. It's either me or Zion, and they chose me.'

'I don't ... I don't ... I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS!' Frustration won the battle for supremacy in Link's head and heart, and he pounded the table with his fist, rocking its delicate legs. 'I don't get it! I know you did some pretty bad stuff but the machines don't care about that! Why are they doing this to you? Why the hell would the council sell you out like this?'

Mary took some time to gather herself. She was vulnerable and marred and weary. She wanted desperately to shut her eyes forever, to float away in some faraway land where clouds replaced the floors people trod on. Her bushed body was giving up. This was the twilight of her living days.

'Modus Vivendi.' She said.

'What?' Link cocked his eyebrows in query.

'Modus Vivendi. An arrangement that allows people of different groups, beliefs or opinions to work and live together.' Mary elucidated. 'A Modus Vivendi was struck between the machines and Neo on Zion's behalf.' It took most of the strength she had left to lean forward. 'The council will never side with you, Link, because of the Modus Vivendi.'

'The truce? I thought we agreed that...' Link paused and moistened his lips. 'We've been working hard for years –'

'Link... The truce is all they have. Waging a war with the machines is cause for genocide...' The nightmare embossed in her brain, assaulting her troubled mind day in day out, flashed before her eyes. She pushed it aside. 'They will _never_ give it up for anything. Not me. Not even you.'

* * *

Up next, **Episode 3: Still Blue  
**

_Synopsis:_ A certain councillor pays E-001, also known as Mary, a visit after Captain Link's departure. The episode also takes a look at events involving E-001 before her eventual liberation from the matrix.


End file.
